Prosperity without growth: is it possible? Watch the 40th Macaulay Lecture on our YouTube channel

"Professor Jackson’s book, 'Prosperity without Growth' is a world-renowned landmark in the sustainability debate"

Is economic growth the solution to our challenges? Will it really deliver prosperity and wellbeing for a rapidly growing global population and allow us to live on a planet with finite resources? Should our prosperity be measured by the size of our gross domestic product?

These questions, and many others, will be at the centre of the 40th TB Macaulay Lecture, to be given by Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), on 4th October at Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh.

For the first time in the 40-year history of the TB Macaulay Lecture, viewers of our YouTube channel will be able to watch the lecture in real time and send questions to Professor Jackson. A video recording of the lecture will remain on our channel after the event.

Professor Jackson’s book, “Prosperity without Growth”, is a world-renowned landmark in the sustainability debate. Originally published at the outset of the global financial crisis, Jackson's seminal work challenges orthodoxies, causing us to question the primacy of economic growth at all costs, and has drawn praise across the world from politicians to Nobel Prize-winning economists.

Against a backdrop of Brexit, and ongoing debate over Scotland's economy and where growth could or should come from in the future, during his lecture Professor Jackson will seek to show how we can exist within the ecological limits of our planet and help us understand how we can chart a course to a new longer-lasting prosperity.

He will also discuss how much has changed both economically and socio-politically in recent years, focussing in particular on Brexit from a Scottish perspective; on how Scotland can develop its economy; and on how economically autonomous Scotland can be in a globalised world facing major environmental challenges.

“I’m delighted to be giving the 40th TB Macaulay Lecture,” said Professor Jackson. “There’s never been a more important time, for Scotland and for the UK, to understand what it means to build a sustainable economy that works for everyone. The challenges are enormous, of course, but the rewards of rethinking how we deliver prosperity are higher than they’ve ever been.”

Presented by the Macaulay Development Trust and the James Hutton Institute, the annual TB Macaulay Lecture is given to stimulate thinking and dialogue about contemporary environmental issues.

Notes to editors:

The annual TB Macaulay Lecture honours the vision of Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay. Dr Macaulay was one-time President and Chairman of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada who provided an endowment to found the Macaulay Institute for Soil Research in Aberdeen in 1930, a predecessor of the James Hutton Institute.

The Macaulay Development Trust is a charity which supports excellent research into sustainable use of land and natural resources, for the benefit of people, their communities and the environment which aligns with the vision and legacy of TB Macaulay. It has financial investments, which are managed on an ethical basis and some investment property which generate the funds which are subsequently distributed in grants.